The Vision of the Anointed

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1. monero-xmrNov 2023
   That is the Malthusian take. The Club of Rome famously announced in "Limits to Growth" that we were going to run out of resources, and it caused great anxiety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome

   They were totally wrong on every point. All of their predictions failed. It's because technology constantly adapts. If some resource is low, alternatives are found. Productivity increases. Price signals tell entrepreneurs what to work on and produce more of. We will never run out of anything.

   Regarding CO2, it pains me greatly that people actually think a few degrees change in temperature will destroy the earth. The earth has been much warmer and much colder. Mesopotamia used to be paradise, now it's a desert. Regions change. Humans adapt. This is no reason to do something extreme, or live with existential grief.

   For people that live in constant anxiety about all the things politicians and the news tell you about, I recommend this book, what can it hurt giving it a read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vision_of_the_Anointed

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2. vixen99Aug 2023
   Yes, terrific books. Absolutely recommended. I look forward to celebrating his 100th birthday. If you've not come across him The Vision of the Anointed would make for a interesting introduction.

   'Dangers to a society may be mortal without being immediate. One such danger is the prevailing social vision of our time - and the dogmatism with which the ideas and assumptions and attitudes behind that vision are held.'

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell

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3. iammiscSep 2021
   Hold on hold on. This comment presupposes that blacks have ways been disadvantaged. That's not true at all. Before the civil rights movement of the 60s, black incomes were increasing at a faster rate than whites and were on track to surpass the white income. Blacks even had more kids born within wedlock. The ghettoization of the African American community is a recent development. For most of the post bellum period, African Americans were on a swift upward trajectory. They were much like Asians today, who also often started with nothing in this country (due to currency export restrictions) and whose education achievement and incomes surpass whites...

   Indeed poor black immigrants to this country do extremely well also.

   All this is detailed extensively in the vision of the anointed by Thomas sowell (an accomplished black man from this era)

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4. esjaJul 2020
   Anyone who enjoys Sowell's perspective and is interested in (and irritated by) modern politics should also take a look at "The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy".
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5. 18pfsmtAug 2019
   Thomas Sowell, wrote a great book in 1995 about the phenomenon you describe. The Vision of the Anointed lays out this problematic tendency. It was quite prevalent 100 years ago as anxiety arose about the industrial revolution (radio, telephone, automobile), and labor moved from the farm (14hr days during half of the year) to the factory.

   “Yet a polemical tactic has developed which enables virtually any general statement, however true, to be flatly denied, simply because it is not 100 percent true in all circumstances...Even in the days of Stalin, to make a distinction between the Communist world and the free world was to invite sarcastic dismissals of this distinction, based upon particular inadequacies, injustices, or restrictions found in “the so-called ‘free world,’ ” as the intelligentsia often characterized it, which kept it from being 100 percent free, democratic, and just.”

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vision_of_the_Anointed

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6. FellshardFeb 2019
   In similar veins, his 'A Conflict of Visions' and 'The Vision of the Anointed' are two stunning incisive books that show pretty directly why we are where we are now, as divided as we are now. Likely corresponds strongly with Haidt's 'The Righteous Mind', referred to elsewhere in this topic.
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